Month: July 2011

Sherwood Schwartz Has Died

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Granted that the man was 94, but still a sad day. Sherwood Schwartz, creator of 1970’s iconic television shows like Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, has died.

At times like this we like to celebrate such a person’s contribution to Shakespearean culture. It seems only fitting, then, to include this clip. You know what’s coming. Everybody, sing along. “I ask to be, or not to be, a rogue or peasant slave is what you see….”

( I hate that YouTube allows you to disable embedding of video clips. If they’d started out that way, they wouldn’t be what they are today. )

Bonus, here’s Marcia Brady as Juliet. Although that clip isn’t nearly as fun as the previous one.  Although, as I listen more, interesting bits come up:

* Harold (Romeo) says that “he’s almost 15, same age as Romeo.”

* Juliet completely butchers that “is it thy arm thy hand thy foot thy face” line – I had to dig to figure out what she was supposed to be saying.

* Love the parents’ advice that “even the greatest actress in the world doesn’t change Shakespeare.”

* “If only she didn’t think she was junior high’s answer to Sarah Bernhardt.”  Nice!

* One of the boys (Peter?) practices his line, “Hark! Who goes there!” but isn’t that Hamlet?

I need to get back to work, I could go through the whole episode like this.

Review : The Taming of the Werewolf

~ duane ~ 5 Comments


PETRUCHIO

I swear I’ll cuff you, if you strike again.

KATHARINA

So may you lose your arms:
If you strike me, you are no gentleman;
And if no gentleman, why then no arms.
Because I will BITE THEM OFF!

What if Katharina had a perfectly good reason for being so cranky all of the time? You’d be sore too if all you wanted to do was shed your clothes, change form, and run wild in the woods.

Author Sylvia Shults pitched me her idea of “Taming of the Shrew + Zombies”, although when I heard “werewolf” I suggested that maybe Twilight had more than a little to do with it. 🙂 I thought it sounded like fun.

And it is. A small book – barely 90 pages – I read it at the beach this weekend. Katharina gets a backstory! Haven’t you ever wondered what her deal is? Why she’s such a man hater (no I did not say “man eater”, at least not yet :))? We learn of her doomed affair with Amadeo, a man she would never have been allowed to marry anyway, even if he hadn’t been killed by a werewolf. Katharina (Amadeo was the only man ever allowed to call her “Kate”) survived the attack, but alas she’s now cursed. Literally.

With that little twist in mind, now you may begin to play out the familiar story. Petruchio has come to Padua to wive and thrive, and when he hears about the substantial dowry that Katharina brings, he takes up the challenge. How long will it be until she (pardon the expression) bites his head off? Is he the alpha male she’s been looking for, without ever realizing what she needed?

I want to use this opportunity to bring up a topic of discussion. Many people have retold Shakespeare’s tales in many different ways. Here, despite the fact that a new story element has been added and the whole book being written in modern prose, the actual Shakespearean dialogue is often kept. I find this jarring. If you add dialogue and that dialogue is modern English, why switch back to spoken Shakespearean just to mimic what’s in the original script? Compare West Side Story as an example. While everyone who ever sees that play can plainly tell that it is a direct port of Romeo and Juliet, it manages to also be an entirely unique entity without suffering in the least for it.

What do you think? If somebody wants to take Shakespeare’s story and play with it, would you like to leave in elements of the original, or just go ahead and write the parallel-universe version where you can do what you want?

I prefer the latter in a case like this. This book wants to be a romance novel, but it’s too short and gimmicky (no offense, Sylvia!) to really accomplish that task. It’s closer to young adult (though there’s just enough sexy time for me not to give it to my 9yr old). So instead I say go for it – throw off the shackles of trying to too closely mimic your source material. Take the story of the shrew waiting to be tamed, and retell it however you want. Change the names, change the dialogue, and take as much time as you need to really dig into your backstory. There’s plenty of opportunity to go all “bodice-ripper” here – lust, passion, individuals quite literally succumbing to their animal instincts! – so why not jump in with both feet? Go the West Side Story way, and make Twilight meets Shrew. Could be a winner!

Of course for every West Side Story there is a Shakespeare in Love, or a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, showing that the opposite side of the argument is also true – you can use your Shakespeare foundation and create an amazing story right in the middle of it. In this case, however, I don’t think the source material stands up the same. Shrew doesn’t really stand up to R&J or Hamlet in the modern reader/viewer’s mind.

What do you think?

Rosaline, the Movie

~ duane ~ 6 Comments

Spotted on Twitter (thanks, elrankin!) is news of a Rosaline movie that will give us Romeo and Juliet from “Romeo’s ex-girlfriend’s point of view.” I won’t take issue with exactly what Romeo and Rosaline’s relationship was at the beginning of the play, I figure that’s close enough.
The article uses the example of Wicked as retelling Wizard of Oz. But what comes to my mind is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. There’s only one Tom Stoppard, certainly – but R&G has become one of the defining examples of how to take Shakespeare, turn him sideways, and create something awesome. Could this project do it again? Or is there just not enough meat on the bones of the Rosaline back story? The great thing about R&G is how Stoppard weaves the actual telling of Hamlet throughout – he makes it obvious that his story is taking place in between the scenes, when the action of the play has gone elsewhere. How will Rosaline make that work, when she’s basically gone after the Capulet party? Should we just stick her in every crowd scene? Add some previously unseen interactions between her and the main characters?

John Quincy Adams, on Shakespeare

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Ok, here’s a very cool crossover. I had some fun once upon an April Fool’s Day with the “Ireland Forgeries”, a collection of counterfeit Shakespeare papers circa 1790s that included letters to Anne Hathaway, new plays, and other extraordinary things that were, of course, all fake.
Sure, we know that *now*. But how did other people of the time feel about it? Haven’t you ever wondered what the American founding fathers thought about the discovery?
Well, now you can ;). Check out some of John Quincy Adams’ writing on the topic:

Went with them and Mr. Vaughan to see Mr. Ireland [presumably William Henry’s father Samuel], and saw several of his manuscripts which he assures have been lately discovered, and are original from the hand of Shakespear. They are deeds, billets, a love-letter to Anne Hatherrwaye with a lock of hair, designs done with a pen, a fair copy of Lear, three or four sheets of a Hamlet, and a Tragedy hitherto unknown of Vortigern and Rowena. The last we did not see, as unfortunately some company came, to which Mr. Ireland was obliged to attend, and we accordingly took our leave. The marks of authenticity born by the manuscripts are very considerable, but this matter will like to occasion as great a literary controversy as the supposed poems of Rowley, and those of Ossian have done.

(emphasis mine) This was found in Adams’ diary dated November 19, 1795. So even then the reception among learned men seems to have been “They look authentic, but…”
There’s much, much more, but I don’t want to steal the original author’s thunder. Go read the whole thing! How neat.

What Are You Wearing?

~ duane ~ 5 Comments

With summer upon us I’m in the mood for a new Shakespeare t-shirt. I’ve got my “Mercutio Drew First!” as well as a blue one that’s just a big picture of Shakespeare rolling his eyes (a variant of Droeshout), but I can’t be the guy who shows up to events always in one of those two shirts. 🙂 Looking for ideas.
What sort of Shakespeare stuff have you got? I know I said “wearing”, but subject lines are everything :). I’ll open it up to hats, beach bags… anything that’s got something Shakespeare in it, that you might be flaunting at the beach or on vacation. Books don’t count :).